VOTE FOR SOROLLA

I wondered if I was unwell. I’ve been feeling tired, listless, irritable and prone to outbursts of inexplicable rage.

Things came to a head last week when I was writing my book – that alone might be the cause – when the front door bell rang. I work at the top of the house in a tower so it takes 50 steps to get to the front door. Despite my bellowing “I’m coming” a pamphlet was being pushed through the letterbox. “No” I shouted so it was rapidly withdrawn tearing as it was pulled out.

I flung open the door to find a short woman with a young man. Not Jehovah’s Witnesses, not obvious salespeople, not neighbours.

“I’m not sure what you want but I’m very busy right now”

She smiled “I just wanted to ask if we could count on you voting Green in the forthcoming Council Elections.”

Suddenly one of those rages surged and I exploded into a rant.

“Politicians! You ought to be thoroughly ashamed -  all of you. Delivering promises which you replace with expedient ideas, prevaricating, destroying people’s hopes and lives. My wife and I shall probably never vote again. There’s no point. You are guilty of terrible things”

She seemed unruffled by this and calmly explained this was a local not a General Election.

“But you politicians are all the same” I snarled (it was meant to be a snarl but didn’t really sound menacing).  I changed tack and turned to the young man “you’ve said nothing – Why should I vote for this person?”

He fixed me with a level gaze “Actually I think you should, she’s very good, works really hard and cares about important stuff….”

She interrupted “He has to say that;  you see he’s my son and I’m cooking his dinner tonight.”

I was nearly won over and the rage had subsided.

A combination of the extraordinary behaviour at Westminster, my having temporarily given up alcohol and this book which as such things always are is a little exasperating may be the cause of my wrath and howling rages - they ought to call me Wolf Hall – but we can fix one right now.

In Saturday’s Times Patrick Kidd quotes from Richard Harris’ book “The Wicked Wit of Ireland “

“I formed a group called Alcoholics Unanimous. If you don’t feel like a drink, you ring another member and he comes over to persuade you.”

The second is fixed too. The book is finished bar corrections, editing and a bit of rewriting.

And the third will be cured by political abstinence and thinking about better things. The Sorolla exhibition is at the National Gallery. He’s Spanish, late 19th century and is called “The Master of Light”.

Most of his painting was done in the open air and is truly joyful, When I look at “Sewing the Sail” I cannot give a fig for Brexit or Westminster.

All I can see is dappled sunlight, the sea and laughing, contented people.

REBELLIOUS TRENDS

I got a call the other day. It was a wrong number, a Mr Sculley from Nuneaton who was sorry to bother me. He said he was old (actually only a bit older than me) recently bereaved and prone to misdial. He blessed me for being kind and said “can I ask one thing?”

“Please tell those politicians to sort things out. It sounds like they might listen to you.”

Not even me I’m afraid. I suspect there are Sculley’s all over the UK desperate for people to stop this nonsense. We have made our bed – that was the referendum – we got a result a lot of us hate but we have to get on with the best departure we can fashion. That’s what’s on the table and now we need to progress. The option of the crash-out at the end of this month is no longer in our hands if the EU petulantly refuses an extension to Article 50 and this has to be possible.

Whichever way this goes our automotive industry and other businesses will be wrecked, although new technology would have made this probable eventually anyway. Sadly many of the people cheering on BBC Question Time for a no deal exit will soon be out of work partly because of it. Their relish for self-destruction is mystifying.

We are in a period of global readjustment and tough times for everyone (except, as ever, the very rich).  I’m not sure when in our history 2019 most resembles. Perhaps the early 16th century when Henry VIII broke free from Rome. (In the way he’s generally depicted he resembles a recklessly autocratic Donald Trump.) But in that late medieval troubled era England managed to punch above its actually rather meagre weight. The key similarity was the rebelliousness of our behaviour and a deep seated belief that normal rules did not apply.

And it’s still here and like the kraken it’s re-awoken. We see schisms appearing in politics  and in social attitudes to institutions. We used for instance to believe that the unanimous decision of a jury in a trial was final. It would be unusual for the media, as the Times did on Saturday, to continue to describe the pilot, Andy Hill, in the Shoreham Air Show tragedy whom a jury found not guilty of manslaughter, in terms which implied he was actually guilty.

Disruption is becoming rebellion and this feels dangerous. Our societal tectonic plates are  shifting around. I doubt if any of us would put money on May and Corbyn (described by Jess Phillips as being as old fashioned and irrelevant as Tom and Margo from the old TV series the “Good Life”)  still being in office by the summer.  Dangerous times but they also feel challenging and perhaps offer us the possibility of a new start rather like a relegated football team and that’s how we feel right now. 
 We are becoming increasingly rebellious but rather carelessly are about to score an own goal. Oops!

THE CURSE OF DIY

We are living in a DIY world in which bodging amateurs like me reluctantly volunteer to sort out long standing domestic defects usually to catastrophic effect. When we moved four years ago it seemed the previous incumbents – presumably  the husband – had succumbed to pressure and agreed to hang some pictures which had been hanging around for years.

We don’t know exactly what happened but we can’t fault the apparent enthusiasm with which he set about his task armed, we’d guess, with a sledgehammer. We cannot know whether or not he’d fortified himself with a bottle of good strong Malbec before donning his overalls and sallying forth. We cannot be sure if the air was blue with words seldom heard and always recorded in the media as ******* or ****! But we can be sure that the task was not as simple as it seemed.

To be fair the walls in Brighton are mostly made of a material unique to the area called “bungaroosh” which comprises miscellaneous materials such as whole or broken bricks, cobblestones, flints , small pebbles and sand from the beach mixed with  hydraulic lime. It never caught on outside Brighton (obviously) and in Brighton, builders curse the memory of the idiot who thought up this wretched substance.

The consequence of ignorance, drunkenness, skill-deficit and bungaroosh meant a series of abortive cavernous holes where flint obstructed the insertion of a nail, screw or eventually I’d guess whatever came to hand. It looked as though someone had been blasting the wall with a 12 bore shotgun – well perhaps not quite but I like that image.

There’s a serious point here. I wouldn’t ask someone who knew nothing about it to do my accounts or someone who’d never driven to be a chauffeur. Doing work around the house that is effective, long lasting and not unsightly requires skill, experience, patience , time and the right tools. Which is why our DIY man has been such a find. Recommended by our nephew He’s spent a week doing all those jobs that in four years have guiltily remained on my “to-do” list. And our lives have been miraculously transformed. Doors now close, cupboards are opened with smart knobs as opposed to being prised open with a screwdriver, draughts have been excluded and touch up painting has been done so we can’t even remember where those irritating splodges were.

DIY is the curse of the 21st century. Get a pro to do your IT, your accounts, your marketing, your legal work, your mending. In the long run it’ll be cheaper , better and a whole less stressful. Stressed is what the scammer, allegedly from BT, must have been when he rang early on Friday morning.

“Hallo this is BT” an Indian voice said.
“Oh no it isn’t” I said jovially.
“Oh f*** off you f*****g mother f****r” he said and rang off.

That is terrible scamming. It’s DIY stuff. No good at all except to wake you in the morning.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

It’s been a week of identity crises. In the politics we have a new ‘party’ called TIG (The Independent Group) comprised of twelve Conservative and Labour discontents - understandably so given the far-rightness and far-leftness of the parties they were previously part of. These “Tiggers” are upbeat, nice people. who want to restore courtesy and pleasant behaviour to the lives they lead and I expect over the following weeks their following will grow.

A.A. Milne wrote in Winnie the Pooh:
Pooh: “Oh Tigger, where are your manners?”
Tigger: “I don’t know, but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.”

As their numbers grow the Tiggers will have more fun than they have been having up till now. But the identity crisis isn’t just only about antisemitism and Brexit…important though these are …it’s about who we are as a country. And I’m afraid that is the problem. As a mongrel nation our strength has always been our diversity, our adventurousness and our inventiveness.

But enough on both sides of the House want to return to a yesterday, a mythically nicer pipe-smoking yesterday when we made things and had holidays in the drizzle. Who we really are is a bit of a mystery…it may turn out that Jeremy Corbyn is Jewish if he goes back far enough.

And then my own identity got stolen. I barely use Facebook just wishing friends happy birthday and staring at the strange pictures that people post. I worry about Facebook like I worry about climate change and environment pollution. Facebook are the plastic bag litter louts of communication. With 2 billion users they are an existential threat to us all. And we ignore this because they are so omnipresent. Suddenly some bogus ”me” is sending out stuff on Facebook Messenger pretending to me.  He appears to be middle European and – I hate this – he can’t be stopped.

Meanwhile I have left Facebook - you try they won’t let you go that easily – and I’m going to go from Twitter and Instagram too.  Because I have lost control. Talking of which – and this isn’t just another moan – I had a problem with my Bank who’d failed to make a direct transfer from my account. I spent an hour on the phone trying to sort it. It was impossible getting round their charming incompetence.

One suggested.

“Why don’t you go to your local branch to sort this?”

Because they’ve closed it down I shouted….and then apologised. Manners , Richard, manners. Outside today the sun is blazing down and daffodils are doing that Wordsworth thing. And I’ve just read Sathnam Sanghera’s problems using one of those “switch your utility providers and save money” services. He ended up with two providers, being charged twice and then being cut off.  I’ve decided I’m better off being nice, loyal and avoiding technology I don’t like, use or understand but have foolishly flirted with.

 I’ll have more fun and daffodils will do for me.

RIGHTS, WRONGS AND LOOPHOLES

Am I alone in thinking we have a moral vacuum in which views about what’s right and wrong float in helpless confusion? The absence of instinctive certainties is one of today’s biggest problems. The BBC Radio 4 programme “The Moral Maze” exists solely because of this.

The recent debate about Shamima Begum, the 19 year old British girl who fled to Syria aged 15, joined Isis , got married to a Dutch terrorist, lost two babies and now, pregnant again, is claiming her rights to come “home”, have and look after her baby in peace … is a classic example of an issue filling the Times (their “scoop” ) polarising views, with politicians calculating what plays but …. no one knows what to do. When the modern world was created there was no set of instructions and no rulebook issued.

It’s unbelievable but in 2019 we seem to be making it up as we go along. And I see this happening in companies, charities and community projects where reference to constitutions (if such things exist) is often seen as pettifogging bureaucracy.

The problem that all this creates is demonstrated in a series of remarkable events last week.

The first was the protest movement of some 10,000 school children walking out of their schools on Friday at 11 am and demanding more radical action by government to arrest climate change and save the planet. There were some great slogans “I’m studying for a future that’s being destroyed,” “I’ve seen better Cabinets in Ikea” and so on.  I wonder if this isn’t the beginning of a long painful wedge for government. Youth had its say, in interviews spoke well and may have got a taste for it.

Secondly  the President of the Disunited States. I spend most of my time speechless when I see Mr Trump. However I totally agree with his action last week. He was right to call a State of Emergency. But it’s not the wall – a preposterous notion - it’s Donald Trump being President who’s the emergency. Can’t someone get the schools in the USA to walk out? He might listen to that. If being completely confused, grumpy and disoriented is less bad than being swaggeringly certain and plain wrong Britain unbelievably is in better shape than America right now.

Example 1. Save 50% by skiplagging

Finally finding loopholes in pricing structures. A bit like tax avoidance which is OK whilst tax evasion is not so it is with “skiplagging” (no me neither until the other day). It’s when Airlines charge less for multileg flights than straight trips and some resourceful passengers are buying these and missing off a leg.

Example 2 : Lufthansa from Seattle to Oslo via Frankfurt £556. Seattle to Berlin over £2000. So get off the Oslo flight at Frankfurt and buy a cheap ticket to Berlin. Smart? Well no.  A passenger who did this has been sued; Lufthansa lost but has appealed saying airlines have to make a profit.

Again I’m speechless.

NOTHING IS SIMPLE ANYMORE

A friend of mine is very clever but he also has the irritating habit of describing complex issues as “incredibly simple” or even “insanely simple”. In fact nearly everything we have created nowadays is distinctly not simple at all. The idea of ‘just in time’ as a supply chain concept couldn’t be simpler but in fact it requires Rolex precision processes to work. It’s complexity is such that any tinkering with it will break it.  ‘Almost in time most of the time’ is not a viable concept; it’s like a watch without a minute hand.

What has shocked me most over the past months is the pitiful ignorance of many politicians in failing to understand how complex businesses with sophisticated supply chains work. I suspect they imagine that Tesco is like a larger version of a corner shop or what we used to called “Mama & Pappa Shops” or more interestingly “Cat in the Window” shops.

Our world, like it or not, comprises Smart Phones which are ludicrously over powered pieces of technology worth thousands of pounds but through volume production driven down to cost just pence. The warehouses that supply us with books and clothes and food are increasingly driven by robots so when the Ocado Warehouse in Andover caught fire last week the fire brigade couldn’t get in as it was totally robot controlled. Eventually they hacked holes in the roof but too late. The warehouse was completely destroyed.

The big things we create like the NHS with bigger and better hospitals, new MOD toys like leading edge aircraft carriers and fighter planes so technologically advanced that understanding just why a glitch occurs and how much it will cost to fix is not simple -  it’s very complicated.

There was an old world that an 85 year-old dreamily described as “when we made Spitfires”  (during World War 11 we made 22,000.Morgan currently makes 1.3 k cars a year – fewer but that’s Spitfire country.)  That old world was duller, slower, dirtier (who remembers smog?), and much less efficient in every way but it was simpler and we collectively are beginning to feel it’s simplicity that’s been stolen from us.

How many people really understand the algorithms that drive the Facebook Empire. When  the late Molly Russell’s parents tried to have their daughter’s social media data retrieved – her suicide possibly encouraged by online imagery -  they couldn’t get it done because we’ve become victims of complexity.

I used to play the game “what would you do if the internet permanently collapsed?”  The Millennials burst into tears whilst older people rubbed their hands, got out their Airfix catalogues and Parker pens.

The reality is our sophisticated, incredibly clever systems can’t be done by hand. If the internet collapsed it would be chaos. Banks, retailers, hospitals, transport systems, schools and government would grind to a halt.  Our world is too complex to go back.

And that’s why none of this is simple however much we wish it was.

HOW TO GET AHEAD

A friend of mine with a big job in a multinational company told me about his appraisal. It was glowing, all the KPIs were “smashed out of the park”. But there was just one thing - almost an afterthought. He was told he needed to do something about his “executive presence”. As it was just after Christmas I assumed he was being criticised for the quality of the gifts he’d given his colleagues at Christmas. No he said “executive presence” not “executive presents”.

And he thought it was a problem. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. About why people judge others primarily by their noisiness, by the way they laugh or the way they dress. Years ago another friend – a senior civil servant who’d successfully  led a tricky  project that required great diplomatic skills, intelligence and courage got a review that focused on his clothes -  “this man should get a new tailor”. Save the nation? Pah! Creases in his trousers not sharp enough.

The solution to this, of course, is to learn how to play the game. And there are four immediate things to do.

1. Speak much louder. Clare Foges, the Times columnist and one time No. 10 speechwriter noticed the public school boys around David Cameron all had very loud voices and loud laughs. Apparently you could hear Dave from two rooms away. Clare herself upped her vocal decibels.

2. Not just a  firm handshake - a challenging vice like grip whilst staring into your victims eyes and getting close to them. Behave as though there is no one else in the room, that they’re important like you.

3. Think tall. Straighten your back imagine you’re a foot taller than you are and don’t walk confidently. No. Swagger.

4. Always look as though you have a lot of time and that what you’re doing is easy, almost beneath you and deeply amusing.  Nothing but nothing can ruffle you. Rich Hall (my extremely funny American comedian/musician namesake when asked if he ever got nervous said “no because I don’t care what they think”… that’s executive presence.)

Years ago Jim Collins wrote a book called “From Good to Great”. In it he celebrates low-key CEOs who coach their people and take an avuncular back seat. More Clement Attlee than Winston Churchill. His thesis is the rock star leaders like Jack Welch was belong to a different more combative era.
If, as it seems, business and politics has become a game then it isn’t that hard to be coached to look and behave a bit more like Gwyneth Paltrow than the late Victoria Wood or George Clooney than Mark Rylance. Polish and make up are cheap. Talent and integrity less so.

We could do with a bit less flash look-at-me and a bit more thinking. A bit less Mourinho a bit more Solskjær. It’s time to place our bets on intelligence not alpha male or female braggadocio.

BUT WHICHEVER WAY REMEMBER TO TALK MORE LOUDLY.